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Cruise against Pompey but watch the complacency, Wenger

I’m going to start doing a few new things on Sunday to liven up the days blog, if you have a few spare seconds it would be fantastic if you could leave me a comment at the bottom of the page giving me a little bit of feedback… After all, today is the first birthday of this blog!

Arsenal 4 – 1 Portsmouth

So, yesterday saw us take on Pompey at home, and by all means it was an impressive performance, 4 goals and an easy win by all accounts. It looks likewe have lost Cesc Fabregas for the Celtic game and worryingly, maybe the Man United game next weekend too.

We started without Alex Song, Sagna, Clichy and Niklas Bendtner with Diaby, Eduardo, Eboue and Gibbs stepping in instead.

The early stages were all Arsenal and the first goal was scored by Abou Diaby arriving late to the edge of the area to smash home a cut back from Eduardo out on the left hand side. He skinned his man, knocking the ball one side and running around the other side of him. It was a delightful move and a well deserved goal. The second goal was just as nice with Diaby again finishing a move clinically.

Then old demons returned, a ball was floated into the six yard area and Kaboul ran unmarked, leaped higher than Almunia (who could have done better), and stuck the ball into the back of the net. I think it shocked us, we went flat for a little while and it only picked up again once Gallas poked home this third consecutive goal.

Ramsey got his first of the season finishing nicely after van Persie had slid him through, keeping up the record that only one striker had scored one of the ten goals we have scored in the league this year, and the twelve we have scored in three games in all competitions.

This is one of the best parts of the side if you ask me, if you rely on one player for 25 goals a season it is easier to target them and mark them out of the game, limiting their chances. Arsenal can get goals from all over the pitch, yes, other teams can target players such as Arshavin or Cesc for example, but van Persie will still be there to create things. Shutting down this side will be an awful lot harder than other teams looking at what we have seen so far.

Something I did pick up on though was a little bit of complacency that led to us conceding our first goal, we relaxed a bit which I suppose is only natural when you score two quick early goals and have scored 8 goals in the past 2 games. It is something Wenger needs to watch though, he will know that. We can’t afford to drop cheap points and concede goals that could have been prevented.

There may be a bit of controversy over the ‘foul’ by Gallas on the Pompey forward when he was the last man and clean though, after watching the replay, Gallas didn’t touch him, Utaka clearly tripped over his own legs.

* * * * *

Quote of the week.

The team looks to me to be growing and gelling and being close to it, but at the moment they do not get credit for what they produce and like every team who has not won they still doubt whether they can win.– AW

* * * * *

This season is warming up very nicely but there is an awful long way to go, there is a very long way to go this month even with extremely tough trips up to Manchester to face United next weekend and Citeh after that. Hopefully it will turn out that Cesc Fabregas will only have suffered minimal damage to his hamstring but if its even the slightest pull he will face three weeks out, Wenger saying:

“If it is a little pull, he will be out for three weeks, if it is just tightness, maybe he can get away for Wednesday. In 48 hours, we will have a better view. We went into the game with him a little bit injured and he made it worse, so let’s see how it goes.”

We need him against United and City, it wouldn’t matter quite so much if we had Rosicky and Nasri available, or even one of them, but the only real replacement for Cesc at the moment is young Ramsey who has talent in abundance but it is probably a little premature to expect him to run a Premiership game against the current champions.

Andrey Arshavin has been interviewed by the Times and I absolutely love this bit:

“At this moment I feel shit, I didn’t sleep enough last night. The children [Artyom, 3, and Alina, 15 months] were keeping me up. It’s difficult to come and train on a day like this but what can I do?”

He is straight talking and has a sense of humour, he has said we need to buy but made it totally clear its just his opinion, he is not telling Wenger what to do, unlike players in the past. His attitude is something everyone should admire though, he was asked about his four goals at Anfield and said:

“I think we should stop talking about what performance I showed last season. We should look into the future and talk about what performance I’m going to show then.”

If only this kind of opinion was more widespread, not just at Arsenal, not just in English football or sport as a whole – we as a country would have so much more success. You know he will live up to the standards he sets himself, too.

I will be absent on the blog until Friday this week as I am going away for a few days, Aamir will be here every day so drop him a comment to say hello if you are a blog regular…he doesn’t bite, honest. Heres to a good result on Wednesday night against Celtic, I will be watching.

I will be back on Friday, but there will be a blog tomorrow and every day ’til I return.

See you soon, Arsefans.

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4 Responses to “Cruise against Pompey but watch the complacency, Wenger”

lemme start by saying a happy b’day to the Goonblog!
not a bad game yesterday & to be fair, if it had been Rooney & Gallas yesterday my money wld b on the ref blowing a penalty &/or a Gallas sending-off. I have always had reservations for Gallas’ performances in frantic situations like that of yestrday. Lucky we!
Have a safe trip & Happy Bloggin’!!!